12 Books Like The Bandini Quartet

I love this book because it not only explores the way in which art gets made, it delves into the reasons art often doesn’t get made, and the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way.

All too often, the give-up factor is prevalent both in the art-making process and in the art-marketing process. I particularly liked the chapter “ Fears of Others,” which offers excellent insights into artists giving their power away. 

The evident love of writing, and the insights into how others have done it, plus a palpable kindness behind the writing made this seem (not in a bad way) almost healthy.

A deserved, all-time classic, this book seems to transcend time to capture the spirit of wanderlust. I was young and impressionable when I read it for the first time, and it inspired a sense of profound restlessness to explore, grow, and hit the road to see for myself. 

Neal Cassidy and Jack Kerouac are wild, occasionally unhinged protagonists, and their journey consists of hustling, romance, and drinking their way to a good time. Kerouac’s writing made me long for similar misadventures, where life is simple and finding the road is all that matters. Subversively, the novel promotes a full life and whole human experience, which makes working 9 to 5 that much more difficult.

Take a first-class literary talent who’s a master of language with a soul as dark as Dostoyevsky’s and lock him in a room with the New York Giants on the television and a well-stocked bar—that’s one way of describing this monster book about deep, obsessive fandom.

It’s not just a great sports book—it’s great, period, if disturbing as hell. Like all monster talents, Exley is ultimately almost pitied for what the gods and his Giants put him through.

First up in Fante’s famous quartet of Bandini novels—The Road to Los Angeles is a literary—Tour De Force. The central narrator—Arturo Bandini—is stuck out in Boulder Colorado, where it is freezing cold, and nothing ever happens. Not surprisingly a young Arturo is keen to escape to warmer climes, and pursue a writing career in Hollywood. Immediately I could relate to the books central idea, as I was keen to do exactly the same at exactly the same age, albeit on the other side of the world. This novel introduces Fante's alter ego Arturo Bandini who reappears in Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938), Ask the Dust (1939), and Dreams from Bunker Hill (1982). It’s an important first novel by an important American author.

This is a collection of short stories by John Waters bit-part actress—Cookie Mueller. Most of the well-crafted stories in this cult classic are autobiographical, and most feature the author’s travels around America and Europe, and the rest of the world. Cookie has a unique literary voice, and reading her stories it’s like you are actually getting to know the author personally. Criminally out of print for many years, this excellent book was recently re-published in the UK by Canongate. Unfortunately, Cookie died at the tender age of 40, and so was unable to fulfill her undoubted potential. 

Reading Balise Cendrars—The Astonished Man—is like stepping into another universe, so strange, exotic, and weird are the tales he has to tell. Once again, travel and adventure are the main themes. But what’s real and what is unreal is almost impossible to tell as the author constantly blurs fact with fiction. There are tales of how he lost an arm, encounters with Mexican millionaires, gypsies, a stint in the French Foreign Legion, and vivid exploits in South America and Africa. The fact that this great writer is not better known is a constant source of bafflement, for his prose is dazzling, thought-provoking, and illuminating!

Although not a book about travel I feel this book fits the list, as it is essentially an extended love letter to both Jack Kerouac and Neil Cassady, who at certain stages in her life, were the lovers of the author. What this book also describes is how people who decide to stay at home, while their lovers and friends embark on endless road trips, survive the ordinary hardships of day-to-day living. The book is incredibly insightful and sheds new light on the lives of the aforementioned famous Beat Generation authors. It also warns that the perils of living in the moment, fast time, no responsibilities, does not always lead to a long and happy life. As I discovered during my own extensive travels, if you stay on the road too long, you might not be able to find your way home.

This novel is the best account of the gambling psychology I know. It is a first-person narrative, ruthless in its depiction of the lies that addicts know they’re telling themselves. The story of a resentful compulsive gambler, the poor but superior tutor to a Russian family at “Roulettenburg,” it was itself the subject of a bet. Dostoevsky signed away his next decade’s worth of publishing profits unless he could deliver a new novel within a year. With six weeks to go he hadn’t written a word. He delivered the completed novel several hours before the deadline was going to pass. 

Nearly every Goodis novel features an antihero who has fallen from a higher station in life and is now living on the fringes. In this one, Jim Cassidy, once a highly respected airline pilot until a disastrous plane crash leaves him a broken man, now finds himself driving a bus on a dead-end route, consoling himself with a drink at the neighborhood watering hole where he met his cheating wife and trying to figure out how not to get dragged down even deeper. Of course, things do get even worse for him, and not even the surprising “happy ending” can change the inevitability of the ultimate crash we know is coming for him and for all of us.